Calif Bill wrote:
"Tom Francis" wrote in message
...
On 9 Mar 2007 08:51:59 -0800, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:

Actually, Harry is partially correct. A lot of what appears here is
sort of a "stream of consciousness" format. I don't edit, spell check,
etc and some of the sentences run on far too long. It's a tendency I
struggle with in things that actually matter, but the NG is simply
typewritten conversation and a lower standard applies.
I have a very good friend, known her for years, who is a freelancer in
the medical field. Very sharp and knows her stuff.

I swear to you, we've discussed her articles ad nauseam - she cannot
deliver a 1000 word article in under 2500 words. :) Almost
everything she does has to be broken into two parts.

One time she sent me an article she did about some strange type of
skin cancer and asked me what I thought of it. I replied with my
usual "you've got to gut this and get to the point" so she challenged
me to gut it and still make it meaningful. She would submit both
pieces and see which one was accepted.

I did, I won and she didn't speak to me for two weeks. :)

Friend of the family was a hard hat diver during WW2. He also wrote stories
for the paperback publishers. He said he always put in lots of descriptions
of the land, and building. Got paid by the word. He said he also read a
lot of paperbacks during work. The divers would take a book with them and
just tear out the page after they read it and let if float off as they hung
on the line during decompression stops.




I had a college buddy who wrote smutty novels to put himself through
school. Got something like 7 cents a word. :}

When I wrote for PC Week magazine, I got about $1.25 a word. Wrote an
every other week article, about 750 words. A grand a column. Much more
than BYTE magazine paid me, and even more than PC Magazine paid me. This
was the year after Peter Norton introduced his first set of utilities.
The dark ages.

Anyone remember Volkswriter? Neat word processor written by a Chilean
named "Camille...something or other" out in Monterey, California, guy
who did it as a moonlight project while an employee of the Navy language
school.